William Browning is a journalist whose stories have appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, The Oxford American, Country Roads, Guideposts, The Paris Review Daily and other regional and national publications.

The recipient of the Mississippi Arts Commission's 2022 Literary Artist Fellowship for Non-Fiction, William’s work has been recognized by the Mississippi Press Association, Florida Press Association and Society of Professional Journalists. His narratives have been anthologized in, and noted by, the annual Best American Sports Writing series, while also being cited numerous times by Longreads.com, Longform.org, etc. His investigative pieces on civil rights-era murders have been referenced multiple times by the U.S. Justice Department in case files relating to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. He is also the recipient of an APSE first-place award for feature writing.

A Mississippi native born in the Delta and raised in the Piney Woods, William attended a public high school and graduated from the University of Mississippi, where he studied journalism. He began his career at the North Mississippi Herald in Water Valley, Mississippi, and has also covered crime and courts for the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune and the U.S. Navy for the Florida Times-Union. He is currently at work on a biography of the late P.D. East, crusading editor of The Petal Paper newspaper during the 1950s and ’60s.

William lives with his wife and young son in Ellisville, Mississippi. He fires up his smoker on weekends, visits the Mississippi Department of Archives & History as often as possible and is eagerly anticipating Lyle Lovett’s next album. He hopes you get in touch with story ideas, praises, complaints or whatever else under the sun you may have.